The landscape of UK immigration law is undergoing significant shifts. In 2025, reforms were introduced that tightened visa eligibility, raised thresholds, and imposed stricter criteria on settlement and work permits. These changes have profound implications for legal teams, courts, and the decision-making process in asylum, human rights, and immigration appeals. The role of expert evidence, whether medical, psychological, or cultural, becomes more central than ever in ensuring fairness and clarity.

What’s Changing in Immigration Law

One of the headline reforms has been the revision of the Skilled Worker visa route. As of July 22, 2025, the eligible occupations list has been narrowed, and overseas recruitment of social care workers has ceased.

Employers now also face a higher salary threshold and stricter skill requirements. These moves aim to reduce net migration while channelling migration into more highly skilled roles.

Elsewhere, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) issued a new Practice Direction in November 2024 that affects the use of expert evidence. Reports in immigration appeals are now capped at 20 pages unless special permission is granted for longer reports.

This cap compels legal teams and experts to exercise greater discipline in presenting evidence. The change reflects a broader push toward brevity, clarity, and efficiency in tribunal processes.

These shifts are not occurring in isolation. The government’s White Paper on restoring control over the immigration system emphasises the need for balance, to control inflows while still supporting growth.

However, many legal observers caution that such reforms may risk unintended consequences, including increased disputes, more appeals, and cases that hinge on fine distinctions.

The Challenges for Legal Teams

These reforms raise several challenges for legal practitioners:

1. Narrower margins for error. With stricter thresholds (e.g. higher skills, salary, or English language criteria), immigration decisions may turn on subtle evidence points or the absence of supporting documentation.
2. Tighter report formats. The 20-page expert limit in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal means experts and lawyers must prioritise what is essential and cannot rely on volume. That increases the demand for precision.
3. Increased stakes at appeal. Applicants who face refusal will often need to appeal. Appeals depend heavily on expert evidence (medical, psychological, country conditions, and cultural) to challenge initial decisions or present new evidence.
4. Managing delays and backlogs. In an environment with tighter rules, legal teams can’t afford delays in expert reports. A slow report may mean losing a tight window of opportunity to appeal or missing a deadline.
5. Balancing cost and quality. Under Legal Aid constraints or limited budgets, choosing who to instruct, how much to pay, and how much time to allocate becomes more fraught under these new rules.

How Expert Evidence Makes the Difference

In this climate of change, expert evidence becomes not just beneficial but essential. Here’s why:

Clarifying medical and psychological claims

Many immigration and asylum claims turn on medical or psychological harm (trauma, torture, PTSD). Independent assessments help tribunals understand the depth of injury or mental health conditions and how they relate to the claimant’s country history or treatment abroad.

Explaining cultural, religious, or country conditions

Experts in cultural practices or regional politics can give context to why someone might fear persecution in their home country. Their insight helps connect a claimant’s story to broader country dynamics and risk.

Supporting consistency and credibility

When claims hinge on inconsistencies or disputed facts, expert reports can help assess whether a claimant’s narrative aligns with their mental health state, past trauma, or known country conditions, thereby helping courts distinguish between truthful claimants and unreliable evidence.

Precision under constraints

Given the page limits (e.g. 20 pages in many immigration tribunals), expert evidence must be tightly focused, clearly reasoned, and backed by relevant data. That demands not just expertise, but a report style attuned to tribunal expectations.

Why Foresight Is Poised to Help

At Foresight, with over 18 years of providing Expert Witness reports for Immigration cases, we have long recognised the pressures that legal teams face when working on immigration and asylum cases. That is why our panel includes experts in medical, psychological, cultural, and country-specific conditions, all experienced in tribunal settings.

We ensure that when you instruct an expert, you get someone who knows how to produce compelling, tribunal-compliant evidence: clear structure, relevant detail, and context sensitivity. We manage the logistics of arranging assessments, ensuring your brief is communicated to the expert, managing deadlines for submission and coordinating all communication, enabling legal teams to focus on case strategy rather than administrative tasks.

When immigration law becomes stricter, missteps become more costly. Expert evidence is no longer optional. It is a key pillar of success in challenging cases under the new rules.